


Revelations

by aiIenzo



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, Reyes-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 07:31:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11778360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiIenzo/pseuds/aiIenzo
Summary: "And you, Reyes? Why'd you come to Andromeda?"(He will always be Reyes Vidal, but he needs to find the place where that means something.)





	Revelations

**Author's Note:**

> Took a break from ripping Scott apart to do a quick study on Reyes. As is tradition, I got carried away.
> 
> AN 2018: After reading Nexus Uprising, I realize that how I'd written Reyes departure from the Nexus is drastically non-compliant with canon. Just making a note to readers that I'm aware of the oversight, and it bothers me immensely :)

Reyes isn't a good man.

But he's not a bad one, either.

In all his time, he's found a plethora of words for all the things he's not, yet very few that define him for what he is.

He goes to Andromeda to find answers, but instead, receives revelations. 

 

///

 

He grew up in a piss-poor colony on Earth, far from the adventure and novelty that had sent his more affluent peers off into distant stars for specialized schooling and newfound trades, both of which humanity needed as cutting-edge representation to aid in their quest for a seat on the Counsel. His life had revolved around the small, independent workings of his own hometown, and by the time he had set foot on the Citadel at a mere seventeen years, people his age were sporting resumes and portfolios from planets he'd never even been given the opportunity to learn the names of.

It’s not to say he hadn’t been an attentive student; his grades were high enough to earn him a scholarship to several Earth universities, all of which came coupled with shining approval from his educators. Men and women who had taught him without bothering to _learn_ him adoringly decorated his graduation with throwaway words like _persistent, focused,_ and _charming_ , none of which Reyes felt particularly proud of, even if they were, by definition, correct.

From a very early age, his friends knew him as Vidal, the boy who made a small fortune acquiring test keys in advance and distributing them to those who were desperate enough to pony up their allowance each week. His academic and charismatic rapport with instructors allowed him easy access to their trust, and ultimately, secretly, their provisions.

Test keys became vanished truancy marks, and truancy marks became mysteriously higher grades imputed into the school system, until Reyes effectively held a monopoly on which shitheads had enough money to pass their classes.  

_You’re a fucking hero, Vidal, you know that? A national treasure man. Ay, man if anyone tries to sell you out, we got you, alright? We got you. You’re a lifesaver, man._

Reyes shrugs, managing to hide his disinterest by manifesting it as a fierce bout of nonchalant insubordination that highschoolers seemed to crave, and they’d howl with laughter and approval.  

This was him. This was the beginnings of his talents, of his artistry. He was effective, he was careful, and he was clean.

But he wouldn't subject himself to being remembered simply for morally commendable deeds. He was more than this, wasn’t he? More than profiteering from irresponsible teenagers who were too conclusively striving for social standing to recognize how closely they were teetering to insignificance. It was lacking in ways that stung his already well-developed pride, and he found himself too focused on the future to fully live in the present. There had always been a whole world out there for people like him, but now, he was lucky enough to have a _galaxy_ of opportunity.

He keeps to the streets at first, listening and learning, dealing and analyzing. Biding his time and deciding how to play his future. He allows himself to digest the repugnance of his hometown, for the pathetic, minuscule advances that would be offered to him, how the tip of this iceberg would still cast him in the shadows of others. His decisions were easy.

He will always be Reyes Vidal, but he needs to find the place where that _means_ something.

 

///

 

In the bleak light of their living room, his mother has her own opinions, her native tongue whispering words of his inanity that break through the barrier of their stiff, seven year silence. A prescription pad lays next to her trembling fingers -- blank, save for the signature of a low-brow practitioner she'd had over the night before. A parting gift, or payment, depending on which one of them you asked. It lingers like a black cloud composed only of his mother’s desolation, so near to Reyes' discarded acceptance letters, all of which had been swapped for the one-way shuttle tickets in his hand that would lead him first to the Citadel, then on to Omega.

"You'll throw your life away, just like your _idiot_ father." Pills dot the handmade rug beneath her feet, faded colors that hearken to happier times. Her voice is venom. "Foolish boy. ¿Que te pasa, cabron?"

The only identifier Reyes takes from that is the disdain in her voice. He knows the feeling she spits at him, of being utterly sick of his presence. Of not knowing who he is anymore; of being unrecognizable. If he carries on, it’ll become all he knows, and the small inclination he has to stay, to repair the deep wounds they carry between them, to continue with the life the mother of a younger Reyes would have begged him to consider, all of it dies as she turns away from him, disgust chiseled through the features of her otherwise stoney expression.

_Disappointing._

College is not for him. This life is not for him.

_Runaway. Coward._

He sends packages to his mother for two years, secured, plain, and unpretentious. He never writes very much, but hopes that the trinkets and luxuries he obtains from planets she used to scorn at through their vid would be enough to speak volumes.

One comes back to him, during a bleary morning on Omega, slapped with a ‘return to sender’ label and a hefty bill for shipping reimbursement, along with a note from the new occupant of the house.

_They put all of her things up for sale after they couldn’t establish contact with you. We found your earlier packages, and they were so lovely. You’re a wonderful son, Mr. Vidal._

He crumples the paper, throws it off the edge of the high-rise, and adds ‘wonderful son’ and ‘orphan’ to the ever increasing list of phrases that fail to define him.

 

///

 

Omega shapes and molds him, and for once, his lack of a solid foundation is able to amplify his growth, with very little morality to hold him back from the lessons he needs to learn. He struggles his way through the ranks of lesser gangs, relying on a sharp wit and a keen knowledge of how to play his hands, learning how to differentiate between a powerful name and a powerful motive. He goes for days without food, spending his money on heat sinks and unassuming instructors at the shadier ranges, bettering his aim, trading home comforts for future security.

Building a network of connections remains his staple, and he avoids the attention of Aria and her higher ranking inner circle, carefully treading the line of being memorable without garnering a particular interest. He deals himself in contradictions, being both casual yet professional; audacious, without compromising his flawless results; indiscriminate about the job, but picky with his pay. He makes a name for himself as a reliable smuggler and low-key information broker, but without his own shuttle, his own means to self-sustain, he remains a step below true importance.

He encompasses _everything_ , while remaining nobody.

 

///

 

Eventually, he partners with a woman only slightly older than his tender twenty-one, a pilot and deserter who still keeps her Systems Alliance issued M-8 Avenger as some form of risky trophy, daring those who side-eye it to bring up her crime. She teaches him to fly, and within eighteen months he’s perfected a new art, running a small but effective illegal smuggling ring under the guise of a hospitality transport.

The change is invigorating, and he begins to feel hope for his own prospective. It’s tainted, torn around the edges and patched together with carefully defused calamities, but it lingers in the edges of his vision, filtering his thoughts and motivation and steering him towards an outlook he’s almost too ashamed to embrace. He entertains the idea that, if only for a moment, he can find himself there.

The woman who stood above him in both experience and power so many months ago now gasps beneath him, the chopped brown hair that usually fits snug under her helmet spreads out on the pillow, stark against the purity-infested white that he usually can’t stomach. She’s clever, sharp-tongued and quick to brawl, so when she shudders through her completion and moves to embrace him, the whispered words of _You’re perfect_ ghosting across the sheen of sweat on his skin, he knows she doesn’t mean it lightly.

He pulls her into him, his cognizance wavering in his own gratuitous self-indulgence. But he knows what she meant, and he knows what he’s not. There’s a promise written in the satisfaction of her expression, the beginnings of a future he’s been unintentionally inviting through their time together, and his momentarily bliss is melted away by a rising tide that’s composed entirely of his own selfish misdirection.

He leaves the next day, storing nearly all of their profits carefully in her safe before prying off their shuttle trackers and deserting her on Omega. It feels right. Finalized. The flight back to the Citadel is long, and it gives him ample time to curse her for pretending he can be anything but what he is.

Whatever that may be.

Omega was filth. It taught him what he needed to learn, but discontent rings through him as poignant and distracting as it had all those years ago. He’s better than this, just as he was better then, and he’s smart enough to realize he’s chasing his own demons, not the other way around. The Citadel, however, is a cultural hub of military brats and corrupt politicians, cowardly precipices of power that are hungry for more, yet still fearful of losing their cushion, all of which makes them prime candidates for his particular line of work. A higher class of work for a higher class of criminal.

There is opportunity there, and he aches for it.

 

///

 

He’s been granted an interview in a private embassy room on the Citadel, solely by recommendation, and if the job had been anything less than life-changing, he’d have immediately brushed off the idea of working alongside military. As it were, his interest is piqued, but he’s guarded, so he intentionally presents himself as aloof and plain, just to gauge whether the interest in his skill is legitimate, or a careful ploy. His contact instructed him to come prepared for a demonstration, and he leaves his flight suit half unzipped to reveal the white shirt that correlates beautifully with his cautious expression. All by design, of course.

The Warrant Officer at the table before him is professional in all ways, yet the manner in which he holds himself belies an underlying sense of urgency, of weariness. His eyes are steely, having drawn too many confessions from lesser men, but there is acceptance there, a willingness to _listen_ , which Reyes knew must have been a prerequisite to agreeing to this interview at all.

He’s been speaking for some time, memorized speeches regarding the importance of this mission’s undertaking, the strict performance requirements, and the process of selection. Reyes remains respectful once he realizes the interview is genuine, his eyes only doing a quick sweep over the ‘Ai’ logo embroidered across the pristine uniform.   

“...These tiers will determine your placement on either our central HUB or the Human Ark, as well as your designation, place in cryo extraction, and settlement duties. Please keep in mind that this is _not_ a ranked position, and you will be brought aboard as an unofficial Merchant Pilot. As such, when you return from this initial interview, I’ll need a full copy of any fit-reps, business logs, or otherwise applicable records that can prove any above-average prowess in a pilot’s seat.”

Reyes interrupts the weeding candor to place a thick binder in front of the man, whose eyes snap up to him immediately, patient but calculating.

“And this is?”

Reyes doesn’t hesitate. “Here you’ll find a complete log of all business I’ve ran on the Citadel in the past four years, as well as the VIN for my shuttle, time logs for inter-planetary travel, incident reports involving infractions between myself, The Blue Suns, and Eclipse, as well as detailed affidavits obtained by C-SEC that can contest to my ability to fly under those...shall we say, _strenuous_ circumstances.”

The man sits back slowly in his chair and smiles wearily, his hand never reaching for the (only _slightly_ inventive) binder that Reyes is still considerably proud of. The air of professionalism alters to something unrefined, something easier to breath in.

“Ahh, you’re Vidal, correct?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before pressing on. “I know you. You’ve got as many recommendations as you’ve got red flags, brother. Let’s cut the bullshit, first and foremost. I know all about the business front and your preferred clientele, as well as your history in Omega. You’re a smuggler, and I bet half the shit in this binder is as big of a lie as your good merit.”

He leans forward, a true smile finally gracing his lips as Reyes feels the twinges of worry flatten into something more manageable at the expression. He’s seen it before. He knows what happens next.

“But,” the man continues, laying a hand delicately across the binder he so indiscreetly declared as bullshit. “I bet the fun half of it is true, right?”

Reyes smiles. His reputation, however soiled, continues to proceed him. It’s never mattered whether you’ve done the right thing or the wrong thing; people will only remember that guy that did it _well._

“I can show you, if you’d prefer,” he charms, nothing but the smile of a gentleman engaging in a slightly off-color discretion.

The man gives only brief consideration before he stands and nods, holding out his hand for Reyes to shake. “Absolutely; anything to get my ass out of this seat.” He sighs, and Reyes can hear the resignation in his voice. “Honestly, Vidal, we could use a man like you. You may not be the most, well, _legal_ of aspiring pilots for the Initiative, but you’ve definitely got your shit together where it matters.”

As he’s led back towards the docking bay to let his skillset speak for itself, he can’t help but wonder at the ludicrousness of the statement. How a single man that had any aspect of their life together would choose to leave it behind in such an irreversible, nearly inconceivable way.

He feels that discontent deep in his bones, and he struggles to ready his mind for the feat he’ll need to perform, but he can’t shake the knowledge of how _alone_ he is. In a sea of skeptical candidates looking to run from themselves and all their lives have encompassed, can he be the only one striving to find a path that doesn’t make him feel twisted and coarse on the inside?

 

///

 

The uprising is inevitable, and Reyes had began planning for it within weeks of being awakened on the Nexus. People are irritable, arks are missing, readings are compromised, and everything is falling to shit faster than any contingency plan would have allowed. He lays low, keeping his eyes on the potential deserters: the strong ones who’ll incite defiance, and the weaker ones who’ll abandon everything for men like him to utilize.

He’s known Sloane Kelly long enough to finagle a firm judge on her character. She gets away with violating procedure because she obtains results, but she’s tiptoed the line of true insubordination to avoid being blacklisted by her superiors. Here though, she faces new horizons. She is, unwisely, in a position of control and influence, and Reyes can clearly see the mistake the Initiative made, letting their rabid animal feast on its previous restraints.

He watches her sift through her plans, roaming the Nexus and feeding off the fallout of chaos she so viciously supplies. He watches as she tiptoes towards that edge, testing the waters of her control and planning exactly where to find solid ground when she plummets.

Her restlessness reaches a peak, the whispers to her conspirators verging on frantic, and Reyes sets his own plans into motion, cramming his bags full of whatever MRE’s and medical supplies he’s been slowly pilfering back to his room to hoard. He loads his Initiative-issued shuttle with as many jugs of water he can find, stows his bags, and waits.

By the time the Sloane Kelly is hijacking her own ride, her treacherous supporters manically following her lead, Reyes is already in space, waiting for her, lingering just on the boundaries of association and considering his next move. She could use a man like him, and he could use her network.

Kadara, the whispers had said. That’s her plan. Habitat 4, ruled under her iron fist and represented by the Nexus’ worst applicants. The traitors. The ruthless.

The _outlaws._

By definition, it suits him. The Initiative would not protect him, and he’s made himself fair game by abandoning his post. But while Kelly and her men slaughter the kett and slowly instigate her rule over the outrun and listless angarans that remain in the Port, Reyes hesitates.

He’s not a good man.

But he’s not a bad one, either.

He follows them to Kadara, but remains as disassociated as he can manage while still lingering on the threads of her usefulness. It takes him only two weeks to discover the angaran’s history, as well as their overwhelming struggle with an alien enemy. Kadara used to be their claim, and they intend to recapture it without instigating another war, but their Resistance is stretched thin, and their band of extremists grows larger. They need supplies, desperately, as well as information on the loose canon known as Sloane Kelly. They need _support._

He puts himself to use, and covertly makes himself known as an ally, a smuggler, and a reliable source of information.

It takes only four months before the Resistance leader, Evfra, contacts him personally.

It feels like a step in the right direction.

 

///

 

Reyes drops the conversation with the human Pathfinder, Ryder, at the bar far quicker than he intended to. Something promising and cataclysmic is shooting up his spine and pooling in his gut and he can’t quite get a grip of the reality of his realization.

He shoves it aside.

_“So you’re a smuggler?”_

Scott Ryder had said it with more confidence than Reyes ever could. It was true, by all accounts, but it feels empty in a way he’s always known. Unremarkable. Hollow. An echo of all the things he is, while miraculously amplifying all the things he isn’t. There’s an insatiable urge to keep Ryder from knowing him as something so simple and crude, but his acute sense of awareness and instinctive desire to _flee_ from the moment sure as hell hadn't kept it from existing.

An hour passes, and suddenly he’s offering a round of drinks to a beacon of white, a boy who treats Sloane Kelly with the blatant disrespect and sass that Reyes always itches to speak in her presence. A boy that doesn’t fear her threats, her power, or her mockery of a throne.

A boy who is five years his youth but, as Reyes quickly learns, is curiously, alarmingly adept at disposing of those who dare raise their rifle at him. A boy who exhibits combat tactics reserved for the elite N7, a boy who commands awkwardly across a table, but ruthlessly across a battlefield; a boy who, for all intents and purposes, stands for everything Reyes insists he is not.

But the way Ryder looks at him, like an _equal_ , makes that hard to believe.

 

///

 

Lately, the moniker Charlatan has been adopted to represent his cause - to represent _him,_ however elusive it’s meant to be - and while he can recognize the larger-than-life quality that a catchy, mysterious, even slightly alluring title could grant him, it’s still leaves him feeling off-kilter and removed.

He is still Reyes, whatever that may mean. If it ever meant something to begin with.

He’s spent a decade and a half teaching himself how to pull the rug out from underneath his competition, and he’s utilized every mistake, every lesson, and every shred of wisdom he’s garnered from his years of experience to meticulously plan Sloane’s fall from her poorly enraptured grace. It should feel finalized. It should feel… _conclusive_ , this ultimate showdown. The coup de grace that would cement him as a force of nature on this bastardized planet. His true, delineating moment.

The overhaul of Kadara is his biggest, most carefully construed undertaking yet, and somehow, it doesn’t define him anymore than his birth name does, and the title is just as casual and temporary as any he'd ever known. It’s a part of him, a large part, and something he’s unarguably proud of, but it lacks that finalized piece that he continuously doubts he’ll ever obtain.

_Charlatan._

He adds it to the list.

///

 

Keema stares at him over her drink, a calming blend of local flora that combats her tepid, yet fiery nature. She’s been quiet while Reyes blabbers behind the secure doors of their apartment, blueprints and finer-tuned aspects of their eventual takeover tumbling from his mouth as though they haven’t discussed contingency plans for every possible fallacy at great length beforehand.

The galaxies in her eyes hide everything, but Reyes knows her silence means he’s already given himself away, an invitation for her spark of insight, and he finally shuts his mouth long enough to allow her to berate him.

“You should tell him.”

Her voice is calm, full of a wisdom he arrogantly refuses to respect.

He closes his eyes and swallows his discomfort; his bitter, pathetic shame. For as many times as he’s gone over their plan, she’s countered it equally with talk of Scott Ryder, the Pathfinder, the shining foundation of hope that’s been making planets habitable all across Andromeda. Scott Ryder, who rescued the Moshae and wiped the kett facility off the map. Scott Ryder, who is single-handedly redefining the intentions of the Initiative, racking up an impressive kill count, and saving more lives than Reyes can hold one man accountable for.

Scott Ryder, who still finds time to visit him in Tartarus, who follows his instructions willingly and dutifully, who keeps a line open in the Nomad, just for him. Scott Ryder, who mails him bad puns and clips from old Earth videos he manages to dig up on the Nexus, who answers his comm good-naturedly post-battle, while a relieved, yet frustrated asari fusses over him in the background.

Scott Ryder, who smiles at Reyes as though he’s forgotten the beauty of the stars above them.

He puts his head in his hands.

“I can’t.”

“You _won’t,_ you mean.”

His misery is palpable, and his heart aches for something he can’t hold a claim to. “Keema… Please, just let me enjoy him… Before....”

Keema studies him shrewdly, and he knows she disapproves.

“He’s no fool, Reyes. But you just might be.”

 

///

 

Self-deprecating words come effortlessly to him. It’s easier to fabricate half-truths than it is to face his own enlightenment, especially when it concerns a woman who had sized him up at face value and easily declared him to be a waste of potential. A threat. Disposable, and nothing more. She failed to see that he gives back only what he can take from others, and she had very little to offer him.

“What can I say? I’m a greedy man.”

“That’s why you don’t have any friends. You’re selfish.”

It’s simple this way, to live a personification rather than embrace his own distinct lack of personal acceptance. These are throwaway words, phrases that have been embraced long before Andromeda, long before he traded the dim outlines of his childhood for the fragile reachings of his undefinable future.

But yet--

“Reyes is a better man than you think.”

Again, Scott Ryder shakes him to his core. The absolute _certainty_ with which he speaks easily overpowers Reyes’ own shaky resolutions of who he is, and though Scott may be young, full of a temerarious defiance that often drives him to questionable decisions, Keema is right - he is no fool. He speaks as though his word is gospel, and Reyes, for the first time in his life, is humbled.

Reyes may not be a good man. But he _is_ better than what people think.

He dreams in white that night, enveloped in a horizon he never dared raise his eyes to, and when the first sun reflects against the fresh, pure waters of Kadara, he reaches for his vid-com, the invite for Ryder’s company at Sloane’s affair sliding from his lips as easily and pure as the flirtations he’s been so afraid to embrace.

 

///

 

Scott Ryder’s brazen nature easily overwhelms Reyes’ caution.

The kiss is powerful, and keeping his eyes focused on the guard’s exit rather than slipping them closed to fully embrace the moment he’s been simultaneously vying for and pushing away requires more self control than he truly thinks he has.

Because there are very few things in the universe that Reyes’ doesn’t understand, but the way Ryder’s warm contact fills in the holes of his patchwork essence, blossoming a substance of character he both envies and admires, spreading wildfire across his nerves as quickly as the slide and press of his lips, all of it is otherworldly in a way words can’t define.

There are no identifiers for the four seconds of peace he’s gifted, and he struggles to find himself afterwards, to make light of a tease he ruefully hopes is so much more than the recurring fantasy he’s been all too guilty to indulge.

He finds his whiskey and takes the hand of a boy who looks at him and _sees_ all of the things Reyes’ isn’t. Scott Ryder’s depth of understanding is a miracle in and of itself, and for once, Reyes isn’t afraid of all the things he’s _not_ , nor is he ashamed of all the things he _is_ ; every decision has brought him closer to this moment, and he will allow Ryder to see everything if it means one more shared moment of affinity.

 

///

 

He’s not much for expressing his whims, and certainly not to the personification of prosperity that sits casually beside him on the rooftop, but he can still taste Scott’s unique blend of serenity and aggression on his lips, the ghost of fingers in his hair, and suddenly, a lot of the things Keema goads him to believe start making sense.

He wants to ask how many different ways Scott can employ the term Pathfinder, and whether he can help guide Reyes to what he needs to know. That Initiative white Reyes used to _hate_ is tarnished, scuffed around the edges from where Reyes had dragged him through corridors, feet kicking up dirt amidst hushed laughter. For a moment, the metaphor hits hard, just another pure thing that he’s managed to taint in his never-ending quest to lose his empathy, but Scott is grinning at him like the weight of worlds don’t hang in the balance.

"And you, Reyes? Why'd you come to Andromeda?"

It's the standard question, but it's _the_ question, out here. It's the question that defines who you are, the first impressions, and the solid foundation of what you deem important. It’s the cornerstone of what matters, a place where all other identifiers are built upon, and he doesn’t quite know how to explain trading one emptiness for another. His life for space.

Reyes Vidal can mean anything out here. So why hasn’t it?

"To be someone."

Scott smiles at his answer, and there's an understanding there that can't possibly be fabricated, despite Reyes mixed signals of indifferent, meek idiosyncrasies combated by tentative bursts of raw affection and pride. Scott adjusts himself to be closer, for the physical proximity to match the emotionally charged perception they keep polarizing between each other.

Reyes has waited for a moment to define him for 27 years, and for all his desperation, for all his fragile hope and vicious soul-searching,  it still manages to take him by surprise.

"You’re someone to me."

 


End file.
